Will spend the next 22 days attached to the ISS before returning.

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After some issues with its thrusters hours after launch, the SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station. NASA reported that the capsule attached to the Harmony module of the ISS at 8:56am EST Sunday morning, with the door set to be opened on Monday morning.

Dragon took off from Cape Canaveral on Friday morning and reached orbit without a hitch, but a pressure problem prevented the thruster pods from initializing once orbit was attained. The four pods then gradually came online over the course of the day. Two pods are needed to get Dragon to the ISS, with a third pod necessary for successfully maneuvering once the station is reached.

Loaded with nearly 1,270 pounds of supplies (575kg, to be exact), Dragon will spend the next 22 days docked with the ISS. On its return, the capsule will carry more than 1,200kg of cargo, according to NASA. Included in the return payload will be seedlings and metal mixtures that spent time in low gravity, along with biological samples taken from the crew.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

You know you can sign up for a text message from NASA that will tell you when you can see the station with your own eyes, right? http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Unless...

My God! They must have ISS shaped planes that do high flying passes over populated areas to fool the masses! Wake up sheeple!

I hope this saga doesn't impact SpaceX's long term relationship with NASA.

By aerospace screwup standards, this is pretty minor. NASA and the military aren't ignorant of how enormously difficult it is to build a machine that can survive the rigors of spaceflight without having a hiccup.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

Dude, you SOUND like a tin-foil man. Anyone with good weather can take a sizeable telescope outand see it.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

Dude, you SOUND like a tin-foil man. Anyone with good weather can take a sizeable telescope outand see it.

You know the real conspiracy ? ... Its Australia. It doesn't exist. Its all actually a compound in Nevada. Every time you travel there, they gas you and turn the plane around. Everything thing else is photo manipulation and clever animatronics .. I mean white people in the desert with those riduculous accents .. Its so obvious

Good to know they got the problem resolved in reasonable time. Mission objectives achieved so far. This bodes well for the future of commercial (non government funded) spaceflight. Still funded by government contracts for now but that's just a bootstrap to getting things more reliable and cheaper.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

Haha, what? Where the hell did you come from? Has Youtube leaked again?

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

Quote:

Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an Internet adage reflecting the idea that without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and an exaggerated parody of extremism.[1]

I hate Hollywood. Everytime I hear about somes seeds or organizms coming back from LEO I think "Andromeda Strain". Good going for SpaceX though. I think that I spend enough time cheerleading that I should invest in some pom-poms.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

Quote:

Poe's law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an Internet adage reflecting the idea that without a clear indication of the author's intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and an exaggerated parody of extremism.[1]

Oh well I got a tired brain at the moment and am still fascinated by how much money that goes in to take humans and things a few kilometers vertically...

Taking the stuff the few kilometers vertically is indeed the smallest problem. The vertical part is costing about 7% of the energy of a launch into LEO. Speeding it up enough so it doesn't fall down again immediately after stopping the engines is the hard problem.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

Dude, you SOUND like a tin-foil man. Anyone with good weather can take a sizeable telescope outand see it.

You know the real conspiracy ? ... Its Australia. It doesn't exist. Its all actually a compound in Nevada. Every time you travel there, they gas you and turn the plane around. Everything thing else is photo manipulation and clever animatronics .. I mean white people in the desert with those riduculous accents .. Its so obvious

No way! The real conspiracy is Idaho! I mean, have you ever met anyone from Idaho? The whole thing is Area 51! Declination is just a ploy to get everyone to go around it without noticing!

The big news here is the LOW payload, just 575kg. The Dragon can carry over 6500kg according to the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(spacecraft). Their customers didn't want to risk losing a satellite, as in october? What a waste...

The big news here is the LOW payload, just 575kg. The Dragon can carry over 6500kg according to the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(spacecraft). Their customers didn't want to risk losing a satellite, as in october? What a waste...

That's no news at all. Early failures are common in spacecraft and launch systems, it's entirely reasonable and expected for them to exercise caution with valuable or critical payloads in case there's a loss. When SpaceX develops something of an operational record, they can start handling more important cargos. And even then, there won't always be enough mass to max out the capacity...in fact, they are only required to deliver 20000 kg spread over 12 launches.

The full payload wasn't available anyway, for two reasons: the ISS is in a high-inclination orbit that is harder to reach, and this launch used the v1.0 Falcon 9...it was actually the last launch of that version. Falcon 9 v1.1 substantially increases payload due to upgraded engines and stretched fuel tanks.

Technically, the Dragon berthed to the ISS. Docking suggests that the Dragon approached and connected under its own propulsion, similar to the way the Progress and Soyuz dock. The Dragon approaches, but is then grappled and attached using the ISS arm. Semantics, I know, but it's worth noting.

allwrong wrote:

The big news here is the LOW payload, just 575kg. The Dragon can carry over 6500kg according to the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(spacecraft). Their customers didn't want to risk losing a satellite, as in october? What a waste...

Although the two numbers far apart, presenting just the raw mass is a bit misleading. The payloads may only total 575kg, but there is a difference between mass and the volumetric space that the payloads occupy. I'm curious how much free space was left over in the module.

So you kids actually believe the ISS is real? Seriously? If you were to actually research and investigate the ridiculous claims of this sideshow, you would rather quickly realize how badly you are being manipulated.

But hey, I'm just a tin-foil hat "conspiracy theorist"... nothing to see here, move along.

You know you can sign up for a text message from NASA that will tell you when you can see the station with your own eyes, right? http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Unless...

My God! They must have ISS shaped planes that do high flying passes over populated areas to fool the masses! Wake up sheeple!

Now, I understand! And I can say that California is another non-existing place. I clearly remember that I fell asleep when flying over the USA and was approaching the West Coast. Gas in the airplane, clearly.

Oh well I got a tired brain at the moment and am still fascinated by how much money that goes in to take humans and things a few kilometers vertically...

Taking the stuff the few kilometers vertically is indeed the smallest problem. The vertical part is costing about 7% of the energy of a launch into LEO. Speeding it up enough so it doesn't fall down again immediately after stopping the engines is the hard problem.

Well. technically, it is falling back down again -- but it's moving so fast that it keeps missing the ground.

Oh well I got a tired brain at the moment and am still fascinated by how much money that goes in to take humans and things a few kilometers vertically...

Taking the stuff the few kilometers vertically is indeed the smallest problem. The vertical part is costing about 7% of the energy of a launch into LEO. Speeding it up enough so it doesn't fall down again immediately after stopping the engines is the hard problem.

That 7% figure doesn't seem accurate at all, because closer to the ground, you're not only losing energy to the stronger gravity and air resistance, but even to the fact that you're also carrying the upper stages and their fuel, which will later perform that circularisation.

That circularisation burn to get up to speed near apoapsis, does so with a lighter craft at higher specific impulse, without fighting as strong a gravity field, without much atmospheric resistance and without piggybacking later stages along with their fuel and engines... just getting up there definitely takes more energy!

KSP: making armchair-experts since 2011NASA: experts in getting high since 1958

Oh well I got a tired brain at the moment and am still fascinated by how much money that goes in to take humans and things a few kilometers vertically...

Taking the stuff the few kilometers vertically is indeed the smallest problem. The vertical part is costing about 7% of the energy of a launch into LEO. Speeding it up enough so it doesn't fall down again immediately after stopping the engines is the hard problem.

That 7% figure doesn't seem accurate at all, because closer to the ground, you're not only losing energy to the stronger gravity and air resistance, but even to the fact that you're also carrying the upper stages and their fuel, which will later perform that circularisation.

That circularisation burn to get up to speed near apoapsis, does so with a lighter craft at higher specific impulse, without fighting as strong a gravity field, without much atmospheric resistance and without piggybacking later stages along with their fuel and engines... just getting up there definitely takes more energy!

KSP: making armchair-experts since 2011NASA: experts in getting high since 1958

I'd like to know how that 7% figure comes from, as well.

However, I believe uhuznaa's talking about how you could just launch something vertically without any need for an orbit. Just straight up and down. That would need far less fuel since you're not carrying the weight of the fuel needed for achieving orbit. A real-life example would be SpaceShipOne. It just touches the internationally defined altitude of outer space and then returns to the ground.

If the fuel and cost savings are significant, one interesting thing to think about is having a powered, orbital platform that can let a suborbital payload to sort of hop onto it. This is in contrast to the current method of needing the matching orbit like what happened in the article. I'm sure no one's doing that right now because such method would need the platform bear the burden of the instantly added mass and stay in orbit.

KSP: making armchair-experts since 2011NASA: experts in getting high since 1958

Just to point out that since 2011 the Kerbal Space Program has been in fast-forward. I've gone from sub-orbital hops (well I call them that) to orbiters (most of them came back under their own power, one or ran out of fuel in orbit) to space stations in just a few months. And about 30 "volunteers" who gave their lives to science. Apart from slightly shonky sub-contracters its been fine. (Who knew that you needed parachutes for landing...? Or even landing struts...? Or a decent supporting structure on the way up...? Or more fuel than rockets).

Docking is a pain, but now I used calculated manoeuvres instead of just thrusting randomly I think I have got it.